After the NCAA released its notice of allegations, Freeze’s rating plummeted. He currently has an approval rating of 65.9, which drops him to 11th in the SEC. What may be more concerning is that 26 percent of the fan base strongly disapproves of the job Freeze is doing. No other coach in the SEC had a strong disapproval percentage higher than 12.

Hugh Freeze says the NCAA’s investigation of Ole Miss — including 21 allegations of wrongdoing within the Rebels football program and a citation for lack of institutional control — is the toughest challenge he’s faced in his coaching career, “no question.”

He’s already overcome a related challenge: Finding a silver lining to the rough year ahead.

“I’m looking forward to it in a weird kind of way,” he said.

47-year-old coach has been privately seeking counsel from business leaders who led their charges through similarly muddy waters.

A big NASCAR fan, he consulted with names such as Ricky Stenhouse, Fred Smith and Mike Glenn. Freeze also reached out to former Baylor interim coach Jim Grobe, who last year took control of the Bears during perhaps the most tumultuous season in team history.

“He was the right man for the right time, to stand in the gap there,” Freeze said. “He’s made of such integrity and such great stuff; he’s really what we all should strive to be.”

Ole Miss brass — including athletic director Ross Bjork and chancellor Jeffrey Vitter — has been vocal in its support of Freeze, the man who briefly turned the Rebels into an SEC power thanks to historic success on the recruiting trail and a pair of major upset wins over Alabama.

“I’m very grateful,” Freeze said of the support. “I ask the tough questions of myself and of them. Am I doing things the right way for you guys? They’ve been just phenomenal.”

Roughly 90 days have passed since the NCAA committee requested an official response from Ole Miss, meaning the school will soon provide its side of the story. Then there will be a hearing at an unspecified date, likely later this year.

“It’s very difficult to beat the people in this conference when you don’t have a final answer,” he said.

Former assistant coach Barney Farrar, who worked for the Rebels from 2011-2016 as an assistant A.D./high school and junior college relations, is a major person in the case against Ole Miss who has since been relieved of his duties.

Farrar’s lawyer Bruse Loyd had a strong take on the ordeal when he spoke to Jojo Gentry, claiming that he believes his client is being cast as a scapegoat.

“It is as close to the death penalty as you can get without that actually happen,” Loyd said. “Coach Farrar has been questioned extensively, in fact, five times by the NCAA about those allegations.”

The violations are for:

Providing lodging and transportation to Ole Miss Football recruits worth $2,200, and meals worth $235 Providing false information knowingly about recruiting violations when asked by the NCAA and Ole Miss Football Boosters contacting one athlete committed to another NCAA football program, and allowed a cash payment(s) to that athlete worth $13-15,000 Distributing athletic gear, courtesy of a company owned by an Ole Miss booster, to recruits

Loyd added that Ole Miss is in an unenviable predicament.

“To use the excuse that everyone else is doing it, that’s just not a good defense,” Loyd said. “That’s not a good reason. That’s not an acceptable reason. Some of these rules, you wish they weren’t there but the fact of the matter is they are — and they’ve got to be enforced, and they’ve got to be followed. And if you don’t, you’ll find yourself in the position the University of Mississippi athletic department has found itself.”

The school issued a response to the NCAA’s latest notice of allegations on Tuesday, contesting charges relating to lack of institutional control and head coach responsibility. The university also implied that a current Mississippi State player may have conspired to hurt the Ole Miss football program with his testimony during the NCAA’s investigation.

Ole Miss specifically said in its response that Freeze did not participate in any NCAA violations or look past potential “red flags.”

“(A)fter careful analysis of the testimony and supporting records,” the statement said, “the University has concluded that head football coach Hugh Freeze has met it and membership’s expectations to emphasize and promote compliance and to implement strong and comprehensive monitoring.”

The university also claims to have satisfied the NCAA’s standards for institutional control. Ole Miss claims neither of those charges are based on any new evidence of wrongdoing.

“Coach Freeze was not specifically named in any allegation in the 2016 Notice,” the school’s response said. “Without any additional investigation or rationale, however, the current Notice adds Freeze as an involved individual to one of the legacy allegations from the 2016 Notice … suggesting for the first time that the violation was committed with Freeze’s ‘knowledge and approval.’ … The University objects to the modification of this allegation.”

Ole Miss also singled out a former recruit who has been at the center of NCAA’s investigation. Multiple reports have indicated that Missisippi State LB Leo Lewis claims to have received impermissible benefits from Ole Miss boosters as a recruit.

Ole Miss claimed that the recruit “enjoyed causing the University harm,” and used one of Lewis’ tweets

“I couldn't ask for any more from my people,” he said. “They've witnessed me closely run a program and obviously they have confidence that we're doing it the right way. We're excited to get to the next phase of it."

A reporter then asked whether Freeze is nervous about what that “next phase” might bring.

"I'm just ready to get to the next phase,” he said. “There's no nerves. Just ready to get it over with."

Barney Farrar? The definition of a rogue staff member, one who openly lied to his head coach about the existence of a burner phone.

The nine boosters now disassociated from the program? Ole Miss barely knew who the majority of them were, and even if they did were clearly more rogue elements with ties to Farrar.

And Leo Lewis, the former Ole Miss recruit (and current Mississippi State linebacker) whose interviews with the NCAA provided the most serious charges levied against Ole Miss? An unreliable witness whose story changes with the day, did not offer evidence and even admits to having taken $10,000 from another unnamed school.

But Hugh Freeze? Any violation he may have committed, Ole Miss suggests at one point in the response to the NCAA enforcement staff’s Notice of Allegations, was unintentional. He did everything he could to keep Ole Miss within the NCAA law, and if you don’t believe the school here’s at least 10 different character witnesses to speak on Freeze’s behalf.

Scarblog: Look at the Ole Miss response to the NCAA allegations against him and the school's football program, and it leads to another conclusion: Freeze has more support at the moment from his administration than any SEC coach not named Nick Saban.

The Texas A&M AD just told the world that his head coach, Kevin Sumlin, "has to win, and he has to win this year."

Ole Miss just told the world in great detail that its head coach has won by doing things the right way and anyone who says otherwise - including the NCAA enforcement staff - is wrong.

Instead of throwing Freeze under the bus in the face of potentially crippling sanctions, Ole Miss has circled the wagons around him. Painted him as the picture of personal and professional integrity. Argued that if rules were broken, they were broken by rogue staffers and boosters, and the head coach didn't know and couldn't have known despite his best efforts to run a clean program.

Wow. Beat Saban, not once but twice, and you get supported like Saban.

Of course, the NCAA enforcement staff has a different view of Freeze...

Ole Miss has sold 43,941 of its public season tickets for the upcoming season. That’s down from 46,946 season tickets sold by late June for the 2016, a sell-out number the is the [sic] most the school has ever sold...

While that’s a little off pace, one could argue it’s actually a pretty strong performance given the dark cloud of an NCAA investigation looming and the lack of an opportunity to play postseason football hampering excitement.

Ole Miss AD Ross Bjork seemed to agree with that line of thinking.

“Right now, I know we’re behind where we were last year at this point in time,” Bjork told Potter. “But we’re only a few thousand away from another sellout.”

Ole Miss is two weeks from the start of practice, 45 days from the start of the 2017 season and, thanks to a call to a hooker, now without its head coach.

Hugh Freeze resigned Thursday, although I’d guess that technical description is only to allow him to keep some small part of his dignity intact. He didn’t deserve it. A pattern of personal misconduct, discovered after an investigation into a January 2016 phone call to an escort service, meant that had Freeze not resigned, athletic director Ross Bjork would have fired him.

There’ll be no buyout, and Freeze is now running neck-and-neck with Art Briles for the dishonor of the most un-hireable man in football.

Yes, that’s right: Houston Nutt (whose lawyer found the phone call in a mountain of records) couldn’t beat Louisiana Tech, Vanderbilt or anyone else in the SEC by the end of his tenure. He sure as hell beat Hugh Freeze though.

OXFORD — Here lies Ole Miss' football program without the coach who helped it climb to its greatest heights in recent memory.

Here the program sits without a chance to play in the postseason this fall.

So the natural question is where do the Rebels go from here after Hugh Freeze's resignation, which made for a dramatic and stunning end to his five-year tenure Thursday night.

The immediate future is centered on the field. Ole Miss opens training camp with Matt Luke as its interim coach on Aug. 2.

"The team is the focus right now," Ross Bjork, Ole Miss' athletic director, said Thursday night. "I told the football staff that the number one thing, from beginning to end, is the team and that’s all that matters."

Luke will guide the Rebels through their 12 games, but as was the case before Freeze resigned and remains so after: The future of this program will be determined by what happens off the field.

But now, the future is tied to two things — an NCAA hearing and a coaching search — instead of one. The NCAA will file its response to Ole Miss in the coming days, if it hasn't already. A hearing will be set up sometime afterward and a resolution should be reached sometime this fall.

But one of, if not the main distraction, around all of that was what would happen to Freeze? Even though it was unrelated to the NCAA case, that question has been answered. He's gone.